[wpietri]

One of my big rules is to mostly listen to product feedback from actual users. Are you using it on a daily basis? What makes it especially good for you?

Because "fine" generally doesn't cut it. There are things I use because I love them, or at least I'm addicted to them. For me, Twitter was like that. There are things I use because I have to. Like LinkedIn. But a nonessential product being seen as "fine" by people who don't use it? That sounds like the kiss of death to me.

[lmm]

The likes of GMail (or indeed Facebook) are, y'know, fine, and seem pretty successful that way. Frankly a good social network should annoy some portion of the Twitter crowd; there's something uniquely nasty about Twitter and replicating it wholesale is a mistake.

[dwrodri]

IMO, Gmail is allowed to be "fine" because it did a lot of things all in one go:

- provide a decent browser-based client - lots of free storage! - spam detection that beat out a lot of other providers at the time

It didn't hurt that it was being run by the what was the Big Tech's darling child at the time. Now, it's kind of hard to exist with out a Google account, and thus a GMail account. Google doesn't make a lot of money directly through GMail, but they make a decent amount of money through the enterprise license for Google Workspaces.

As for Facebook, the product is "fine" in the sense there are lots of users, but "Meta" the company is having doubts about whether the Social Graph is truly the priceless asset we all thought it was. More on that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30192364

It might not be fair, but the expectation that users, Wall Street, and even Meta themselves place on Facebook is that it needs to do a lot better than "fine".

[wpietri]

When GMail came out, it was well more than fine; it was a major advance. It had very strong word of mouth. These days it's fine, but that's because email is much less important. It still has a lot of usage for the reason I mentioned: because people still have to use email.

Facebook is similar. People were wildly enthusiastic about it. Some still love it, but for most it's in the "necessary" category. People keep using it not because of Facebook, but because their people are there. Very like LinkedIn in that sense.

If Threads is already only "fine" but isn't necessary, that sounds like the quick path to irrelevancy.

[unmole]

The bulk of Twitter's active userbase seemed to consist of people whoabsolutely hated twitter but were addicted to it.

The overwhelming majority of products are bought because they are perceived to be useful. Loving a social network sounds a bit creepy, to be honest.

[wpietri]

Many, many Twitter users loved it. I loved it. You can feel weird about that if you want, but that's a choice you're making, and trying to push that on me is the only creepy thing I see here.